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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Students of Elizabethan literature are well acquainted with the fact that Sir William Cornwallis had part of Montaigne's essays available in translation before the composition of the first volume of his own essays, which was published in 1600, and probably written soon after he returned from Ireland where he had been knighted by Essex on August 5, 1599. Unfortunately, no one has been able to determine whether or not the translation which Cornwallis saw was Florio's. While Florio's Montaigne was not published until 1603, a large part of it may have been completed much earlier, and Cornwallis may have seen all or part of Florio's work; but it is just as possible that he saw a translation which is not now extant. Florio, himself, says, “Seven or eight of great wit and worth have assayed, but found these Essayes no attempt for French apprentises or Littletonians.” Cornwallis does not help us to decide the question. Although he is frequently indebted to Montaigne, I can find no passage which approaches a quotation closely enough to make comparison with Florio's version illuminating. Neither is Cornwallis's tribute to Montaigne's translator very helpful.
1 Entered, November 13, 1600.—My references, for both parts of the Essayes, are to the edition of 1632. The first essay of the second part begins on sig. L4v. The last three essays (sigg. Hh2v et seq.) were added in the 1610 edition.
2 See P. B. Whitt, “New Light on Sir William Cornwallis, the Essayist,” Review of Eng. Stud., viii (1932).—Joseph Hunter, in New Illustrations … of Shakspere, i (London, 1845), pp. 145–146, reasoning from a statement in the dedication of the Essayes (“yet many Copies of them being bestowed, by often transcription”), thought that the work had been written “some time before.” Such statements in prefaces were, however, purely conventional, and even if many manuscript copies had been made prior to publication it would not prove that the time between composition and publication was at all long.
3 It was entered for Edward Blount, June 4, 1600, and the entry indicates, at least, that the translation was in project, and probably begun at that date. A. E. Brae's argument, in Collier, Coleridge and Shakespeare (London, 1860), pp. 132 f., that Florio did not begin his translation before 1599 or 1600 rests upon a mistake in the nineteenth chapter of the first book, which Brae thought Florio had derived from the 1600 edition of Montaigne, and which could not have been derived from an edition earlier than that of 1598, some copies of which contain the error. But Florio expressly states in his preface (ed. 1603, sig. A6r) that he has used several French editions. Unless we make the unjustified assumption that he translated the essays in order, Brae's evidence only proves that Florio did some work upon the nineteenth chapter of the first book in 1598 or later.
4 “Preface to the courteous Reader,” ad fin. [Littletonians (not recorded in the New English Dictionary) may mean those with little knowledge of French, but I prefer to take it as students of Littleton, that is, members of the Inns of Court.) See also the entry of “The Essais of Michaeli Lord of Mountene,” to Edward Aggas on October 20, 1595. From the character of Aggas's other publications it seems probable that this entry was for a translation. In Pollard and Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue it is placed under Florio, but I find no transfer from Aggas to Blount.
5 Professor MacDonald, in “The Earliest English Essayists,” Englische Studien, lxiv [1929], 42, attributes to Professor Upham the statement that Cornwallis's essays “fairly teem with direct quotations and echoes” from Montaigne. But Upham's actual words are far more accurate: “the Essayes fairly teem with echoes … specific parallels in phrasing are very rare … There is scarcely an essay that does not suggest [Montaigne].”—The French Influence in English Literature (New York, 1908), p. 273.
6 Sig. F6.
7 Miss Elizabeth Robbins Hooker, in “The Relation of Shakspere to Montaigne,” PMLA, xvii (1902), 349 ff., says that Cornwallis wrote of the translator as of a comparative stranger. This is a fumbling way to say that he wrote as if the translator were a man he knew, although not a bosom friend, nor a man of his own rank. Professor Alwin Thaler has suggested to me that Cornwallis may be jesting at a “good-fellow” whom he knew pretty well, so well that he could appear to be patronizing him, as he would write of a fellow-student. This is certainly a possible interpretation.
8 The references to Montaigne are to Florio's translation, World's Classics (Oxf. Univ. Press, 1910–1924).
9 There are so many uncertain factors, including the doubt as to whether Cornwallis wrote all of his essays at about the same time or not, that I do not believe it is advisable to attempt any theory on the basis of the distribution of his borrowings in the two parts of his Essayes.
10 See the genealogy in The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis; 1613–1644 (London, 1842). His father, Charles (later Sir Charles) was the younger son of Sir Thomas Cornwallis of Brome, Treasurer of Calais, and Comptroller of Queen Mary's household. Both Sir Thomas and his elder son, Sir William of Brome, were living in 1600–1601, but Sir William the elder was without male issue, and, at this time, none was expected. Cf. Winwood, Memorials of Affairs of State (London, 1725), ii, 94.
11 It must be remembered that the accession of James and the restoration to favor of many of Essex's followers was not foreseen, or even confidently hoped for, by the majority of Englishmen in 1601.
12 To Sir John Hobart, February 4, [1600?], Tanner MS. 283, fol. 204 (“this Coorse,” i.e., that of the governors of England).
13 Sigg. I1v, 2r.
14 That is, that they were published by a friend to prevent the unauthorized publication of a corrupted copy.
15 Perhaps the best standard by which we can judge the ethics with regard to authorship and printing of Cornwallis's time and rank is the practice of Sir Philip Sidney, who allowed nothing of his to be printed. John Donne's abstinence from the press is another of many cases in point. Bacon, when he published his essays, was older than Cornwallis, and a professional man.
16 Sigg. F7v, 8r. On the amateur attitude see Montaigne, i, xxxix, 300. With “given her an Armour” compare i, xxv, 199; iii, ix, 231.
17 It would take too much space to give a fully documented account of Cornwallis's reading, much of our knowledge of which depends upon his unacknowledged quotation, and must await an editor for complete treatment. He was familiar with about all of Seneca, whom he called “the Prince of morality,” including the De Remediis Fortuitorum, the Epigrammala, and the spurious Octavia, as well as the elder Seneca's Controversiae. He evidently read Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, but he was familiar with the Moralia in Hermann Crüser's Latin. He had read some of Plato (apparently in Ficino's translation), and some of Aristotle, although he had little admiration for the latter and for Cicero. He was very fond of Virgil, Tacitus, Lucan, and Suetonius. He was acquainted with Xenophon, Sallust, Dion Cassius, and Julian the Apostate, as well as with Ovid and Horace, who were less to his purpose. For Greek authors he availed himself of Latin translations. As far as the evidence of his essays and paradoxes goes, most of his reading in modern literature was in Italian: Guicciardini, Machiavelli's Florentine History, Tasso, Petrarch (poetry and De Remediis Utriusque Fortume), and Ortensio Lando. Among modern Latin authors he mentions Scaliger and Lipsius. References to English authors are, naturally, few. They include: Chaucer, Stowe, Overbury, and (the only one to receive much attention) Sidney. Romances, plays, and ballads get general mention. … Although Cornwallis derived a few of his quotations from compendiums of Sententiæ, I am unable to locate any such work of which he made very great use.
18 Sig. Bb8v. Compare and contrast the opening of Montaigne's “Of Bookes.”
19 Particularly Nos. 8, 16, 17, 29–31, 34, 36–38, 48, and 50.
20 Professor MacDonald calls them “abstract treatises upon philosophical or metaphysical problems” (art. cit., p. 39). “Metaphysical” is misleading, for the primary subject is always morality. I have had to give less consideration to Professor MacDonald's classification than it deserves because he failed to indicate precisely which essays he included under his several heads. I believe, however, that my arrangement is substantially in agreement with his.
21 Cf. Elyot's Governour, ed. Crofts, i, xxiv, p. 263; Bacon, Essays, “Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature”; Daniel, Musophilus. Cornwallis may have been influenced by Lipsius (cf. De Constantia, i, vi–ix, xi).
22 Nos. 5, 9, 13, 14, 18, 22, 28, 39.
23 Professor Zeitlin (Seventeenth Century Essays [“The Modern Student's Library”], 1926, pp. xxiii–xxv), I think, is over-severe with the inconsistencies of Cornwallis's moral ideas. The essayist disarms criticism by his definition of the essay as he is using it (see supra). He was in no sense attempting to write a commentary on Stoicism; and the “somewhat groping and tentative style” with which Professor Zeitlin charges him was the result of his avowed plan.
24 Essais, ed. Villey, iii (1923), 283.
25 Sig. Dd6v.
26 Cf. Sigg. Q6v, Y3v.
27 The text is in very bad condition, and it is difficult to distinguish between printer's and author's errors.
